Papers by Eleonora Orlando
Crítica, 2008
In this paper, I criticize Mark Sainsbury's proposal concerning the semantic analysis of fictiona... more In this paper, I criticize Mark Sainsbury's proposal concerning the semantic analysis of fictional discourse, as it has been put forward in chapter 6 of his Reference without Referents. His main thesis is that fictional names do not refer, and hence statements containing them are genuinely false and must be interpreted in terms of true paraphrases, arrived at on a case-by-case basis. In my opinion, the proposal has a problem derived from the fact that the relation between some problematic examples-"Holmes is a detective", "Tony Blair admires Holmes"and their suggested paraphrases needs to be clarified and further elaborated.
Hechos y valores en filosofía teórica, filosofía práctica y filosofía del arte, 2016
Mi objetivo es analizar si el relativismo de la verdad constituye una concepción adecuada de las ... more Mi objetivo es analizar si el relativismo de la verdad constituye una concepción adecuada de las afirmaciones evaluativas estéticas y los desacuerdos sin falta en torno a cuestiones estéticas. Para ello, me basaré en ciertas ideas fundamentales de Danto acerca de la obra de arte: quisiera establecer si éstas son compatibles o, incluso, ofrecen algún fundamento teórico para una concepción relativista de la verdad del juicio estético.Fil: Orlando, Eleonora Eva. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Filosofía y Letras. Departamento de Filosofía; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentin
Semantics and Linguistic Theory
In this article, we discuss expressive adjectives ('the damn keys') and epithets ('th... more In this article, we discuss expressive adjectives ('the damn keys') and epithets ('that bastard John'). In recent literature (see Potts 2005 and Gutzmann 2019), these expressions have received a parallel semantic treatment. However, EAs and epithets present a remarkable difference, namely, only the former exhibit argument extension, an apparent mismatch between syntax and semantics whereby EAs affect a syntactic constituent other than the one they directly modify. After a brief introduction and the presentation of the puzzle (sections 1 and 2), we advance a novel semantico-pragmatic approach to EAs that explains this difference (section 3). According to this view, EAs are Isolated CIs, roughly put, expressions that bear propositional expressive meaning (and no at-issue meaning), and do not interact with the surrounding at-issue material in terms of functional application. In section 4, we present data that lends additional support to our proposal (and represents a ...
Manuscrito
In this essay I defend the view that dogwhistling is a a speech act performed with a narrative-ev... more In this essay I defend the view that dogwhistling is a a speech act performed with a narrative-evoking perlocutionary effect in the so-called target audience. What is evoked is a certain kind of narrative, previously endorsed by the relevant audience, which endows its members with the use of some linguistic expressions (and some non-linguistic representations) with nonconventional, derived meanings. In the dogwhistling scenarios, those derived meanings are recovered and put to work by means of different mechanisms, which has an impact on the emotional and practical attitudes of the target audience. The covert message is thus inferred as the product of the recovered meanings at work and their emotional and practical impacts on the audience in the new contexts of use, which determines a new pragmatic meaning
Boletín de estética, Dec 20, 2021
Resumen La tesis principal del artículo es que los predicados estéticos densos, tales como 'pertu... more Resumen La tesis principal del artículo es que los predicados estéticos densos, tales como 'perturbador', 'sombrío, 'equilibrado', son sensibles a la apreciación, en el mismo sentido en que lo son los predicados de gusto, y, por lo tanto, pueden ser analizados en el marco del relativismo de la verdad. La razón principal que se aduce en favor de esta tesis es que se trata de predicados cuyo uso requiere la aplicación de un estándar estético. Se distinguen dos tipos: por un lado, los predicados experienciales involucran estándares constituidos por estados psicológicos contingentes y aleatorios, característicos de perspectivas estéticas idiosincráticas; por otro, los predicados teóricos involucran la adopción de estándares estables, determinados por perspectivas estéticas canónicas. Esta distinción es utilizada para explicar diferencias entre unos y otros: el uso de predicados experienciales puede dar lugar a desacuerdos estéticos sin falta, semejantes a los desacuerdos sin falta generados por los predicados de gusto, pero eso no ocurre con los predicados teóricos. Palabras clave Predicado estético denso; Sensibilidad a la apreciación; Relativismo de la verdad; Perspectiva estética; Desacuerdo sin falta
El trabajo contiene un examen critico de la version fregeana clasica de la estrategia descriptivi... more El trabajo contiene un examen critico de la version fregeana clasica de la estrategia descriptivista para el analisis semantico de los enunciados de ficcion. En la primera parte, se expone el analisis fregeano de los usos fictivos, respecto del cual, se argumenta, en primer lugar, que la aplicacion de la nocion fregeana de sentido a los nombres de ficcion involucra algunos problemas, y, en segundo lugar, que, contrariamente a lo que parece presuponerse, la idea de simulacion es compatible con las nociones de referencia y verdad. A continuacion, en primer lugar, se analiza la posibilidad de aplicar la nocion de sentido a los nombres de ficcion en usos metafictivos, con consecuencias similares a las senaladas en la primera parte; luego, se examina la propuesta de Church para extender la teoria fregeana de modo tal de poder dar cuenta de la verdad intuitiva de algunos enunciados existenciales negativos. La conclusion es que el descriptivismo tradicional, si bien puede parecer inicialme...
In this paper I defend the claim that fictional names refer to individual concepts, understood as... more In this paper I defend the claim that fictional names refer to individual concepts, understood as mental files. Those concepts constitute the set of thoughts that are in turn constitutive, together with the corresponding sentences, of what I call ‘the conceptual world of a fictional narrative’. In defending this thesis, I offer a novel interpretation of the distinction between fictive, parafictive and metafictive uses of the sentences containing fictional names. Fictive uses are analysed as declarative speech acts of different kinds: they encompass both the original uses, by means of which an author introduces a name in the context of the creation of a fictional narrative, and the replicating uses depending on the insertion in a communication chain leading to that narrative. Parafictive uses, conceived of as mixed acts, partly assertive and partly declarative, are those speech acts in which the narrative is reformulated: the output is the creation of an interpretative extension of t...
Análisis. Revista de investigación filosófica, 2014
Resumen En nuestro artículo nos centramos en las principales críticas al representacionalismo des... more Resumen En nuestro artículo nos centramos en las principales críticas al representacionalismo desarrolladas por Huw Price en su trabajo “Naturalism without Representationalism”, unas críticas que sientan las bases de su primer argumento contra el naturalismo del objeto. Con posterioridad examinamos su segundo argumento, el que se sigue de sus consideraciones sobre la posibilidad de comenzar con una concepción material de los problemas de la localización. Palabras clave: Huw Price, naturalismo del objeto, naturalismo del sujeto, representacionalismo. In our paper we first focus on Price´s central objections to representationalism in his “Naturalism without Rpresentationalism”, which pave the way for his first argument against object naturalism –in his terms, they throw doubts on the possibility of ‘validating’ object naturalism. Then, we will examine his second argument, stemming from his considerations on the possibility of starting off with a material conception of the placemen...
Acta Analytica, 2016
In this essay, I appeal to the mental file approach in order to give an anti-realist semantic ana... more In this essay, I appeal to the mental file approach in order to give an anti-realist semantic analysis of statements containing fictional names. I claim that fictive and parafictive uses of them express conceptual, though not general, propositions constituted by mental files, anchored in the conceptual world of the corresponding fictional story. Moreover, by positing a referential shift determined by the presence of a simulative referential intention characteristic of those uses, it is possible to take them to be true with respect to those conceptual worlds. As for metafictive uses, since they are grounded on mixed intentions, they are considered to express hybrid propositions, partly conceptual and partly referential.
THEORIA. An International Journal for Theory, History and Foundations of Science, 2016
This paper is focused on the abstractist theory of fiction, namely, the semantic theory according... more This paper is focused on the abstractist theory of fiction, namely, the semantic theory according to which fictional names refer to abstract entities. Two semantic problems that arise in relation to that position are analysed: the first is the problem of accounting for the intuitive truth of typically fictive uses of statements containing fictional names; the second is the one of explaining some problematic metafictive uses, in particular, the use of intuitively true negative existentials.
CR: The New Centennial Review, 2011
The main purpose of this essay is to show that the philosophical concept of a possible world is p... more The main purpose of this essay is to show that the philosophical concept of a possible world is part of Borges's fiction: particularly in "Th e Garden of Forking Paths. " Th e main thesis is as follows: possible worlds are part of the narrative content of the two stories thereby involved, the main one and the novel embedded in it, namely, the book-labyrinth owed to Ts'ui Pên; moreover, the concept of a possible world is used in the main story to explain the meaning of the embedded novel. In this sense, the concept can be taken to play an explanatory role that is similar to the one it plays in semantic theories, and more specifically, in those that appeal to possible worlds in their account of fictional discourse. Finally, the analysis of the use of the possible world concept will enable me to put forward a hypothesis about Borges's conception of the relationship between metaphysics and fantastical literature D e p i c t i n g B o r g e s i a n P o s s i b l e Wo r l d s 114 •
Relativismo y racionalidad, 2005
EN ESTE TRABAJO ME OCUPO del tema de la normatividad semántica; más específ1camente, me interesa ... more EN ESTE TRABAJO ME OCUPO del tema de la normatividad semántica; más específ1camente, me interesa analizar ciertas interpretaciones de la tesis, originalmente debida a Wittgenstein, según la cual el concepto de significado es un concepto normativo. ...
Organon F, 2021
The main thesis I want to defend in this essay is that a fictional name refers to an individual c... more The main thesis I want to defend in this essay is that a fictional name refers to an individual concept, understood as a mental file that stores information, in the form of different descriptive concepts, about a purported individual. Given there is no material particular a fictional name could be referring to, it will be construed as referring to the concept of a particular, with which many descriptive concepts are associated, in the context of the set of thoughts constitutive of a fictional narrative. A fictional narrative will be thus characterised as a conceptual world, namely, a set of sentence-types semantically correlated with a set of thought-types.
In this work I reply to Zoltán Vecsey's criticisms of the semantic account of fictional names... more In this work I reply to Zoltán Vecsey's criticisms of the semantic account of fictional names I put forward in Orlando (2017). The main tenet of that proposal is that fictional names refer to individual concepts, which I understand in terms of mental files. In Vecsey (2020), the author presents three main objections: (i) no referential shift can be ascribed to fictional names, (ii) fictional names are supposed to play two conflicting functions, and (iii) the mental file framework is incompatible with an antirealist view of fictional objects. Although the objections are deep and thoughtful, the challenge they involve can be met if certain aspects of the proposal are clarified and developed.
Quaderns de Filosofia, 2014
me concentro en dos problemas que afectan a este tipo de posiciones: el primero de ellos es dar c... more me concentro en dos problemas que afectan a este tipo de posiciones: el primero de ellos es dar cuenta de la verdad intuitiva de enunciados como "Ulises duerme en la playa de Ithaca"; el segundo es explicar la aceptación, también intuitiva, de que "Ulises no existe" es un enunciado verdadero.
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Papers by Eleonora Orlando